Cetniks und ihre faschistische Vergangenheit

Moljevic had definite ideas about the socioeconomic organization of the new Great Serbia. He conceived it as a nation in which work was "the basic goal and sense of life of every man" with just rewards; but the state was to be the chief investor and employer. Private capital was to be permitted to operate but only under state control. All citizens were to be guaranteed a chance to work, and provided with medical care and old age benefits. Freedoms of person, personal initiative, and private property, as well as of thought, religion, and the press, were to be guaranteed but could not be abused at the expense of others; the primary function of the press would be to serve the cause of the people and the state and to further public morality. The church was to be recognized and supported only if it were completely independent toward the outside world and had its head in the country itself; there could be no political parties formed on religious foundations. All this was to combine in a "people's renaissance," in which all Segments of the Ser­bian population, divided into the various professions and inspired by the example of the intelligentsia and youth, would live and work in harmony.

Very similar to the territorial proposals of Dr. Moljevic were those formulated by the Beigrade Chetnik Committee in the summer of 1941 and in September 1941 taken out of the country and later delivered tothe government-in-exile in London by Dr. Milos Sekulic.3 A map reportedly worked out on the basis of this document goes beyond Moljevic, however, in setting forth the details of the large-scale population shifts that would be necessary to make the Serbian unit purely Serbian in terms of population. Specifically: from the projected Great Serbia not less than 2,675,000 people would have to be expelled, including 1,000,000 Croats and 500,000 Germans; 1,310,000 would then be brought into the newly defined Serbia, 300,000 of thern Serbs from Croatia. Some 200,000 Croats would be permitted to remain in. the new Great Serbia.4 No figures are suggested for shifts of Moslems—Moslems are, in fact, only briefly mentioned: "In the Serbian unit the Moslems pre-sent a grave problem and if possible it should be solved in this phase" (meaning, apparently, in the final stages of the war and the early post­war period).5We can assume that Mihailovic endorsed all or most of the above proposals having to do with the territory of a Great Serbia. He alludes to them in a proclamation issued to the Serbian people the following December,6 and in a set of detailed instructions given on December 20 to his newly appointed commanders in Montenegro, Major Lasic and Captain Djurisic, he makes specific references to them äs part of the Chetnik program. The objectives are, the directive says:v(i) The struggle for the liberty of our whole nation under the scepter of His Majesty King Peter II; (2) the creation of a Great Yugoslavia and withm it of a Great Serbia which is to be ethnically pure and is to include Serbia [meaning also Macedonia], Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srijem, the Banat, and Backa; (3) the struggle for the inclusion into Yugoslavia of all still un-liberated Slovene territories under the Italians and Germans (Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and Carinthia) as well as [of areas now under] Bulgaria, and northern Albania with Scutari; (4) the cleansing of the state territory of all national minorities and a-national elements; (5) the creation of contiguous frontiers between Serbia and Montenegro, äs well äs between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing [removing?] the Moslem population from Sandjak and the Moslem and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina.7

The instructions also note that with the Communist Partisans there can be no cooperation because they are fighting against the dynasty and for social revolution, which can never be our objective, because we are only and exclusively soldiers and fighters for the King, Fatherland, and the freedom of the people/' The specific conditions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Dal­matia, and southwestern Croatia (Lika) are the subject of a programmatic Statement prepared by the Chetnik Dinara Division in March 1942 and accepted a month later by the commanders of these areas at a Conference at Strmica, a village near Knin in northern Dalmatia. This Statement closely follows Mihailovic's instructions of the preceding December to Lasic and Djurisic in advocating the creation of a Great Serbia populated exclusively by Serbs, with a territorial corridor link-ing Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika to Slovenia; i t mentions the spreading of the national idea and the rnobilization of all national (i.e. Serbian) elements for the cleansing of Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika of other nationalities. But it contains a few additional ideas in the way of wartime strategy: collaboration with the Italians on a live-and-let-live principle, determined struggle against Ustasha formations and the Domobrans, as well as against the Parti­sans; decent treatment of the Moslems—for the time being, to keep them from joining the Partisans, though later they can be eliminated; and the formation of separate Croatian Chetnik units for pro-Yugoslav, anti-Partisan Croats.8

Late the following autumn another important and somewhat expanded version of the Chetniks' basic program emerged from a Confer­ence of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro and adjacent areas which was held at Sahovici, a village near the town of Bijelo Polje in Sandjak, between November 30 and December 2. Mihailovic himself was not present but he was represented by three of his commanders, Ostojic, Lasic, and Djurisic, and the conclusions of the meetings bore an official stamp. The basic objectives were unchanged: retention of the monarchy under the Karadjordjevic dynasty; a unitary Yugoslavia with the Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene units enjoying wide self-government, but all units having territorial links; wielding of all power in the country—with the agreement of the Crown—by the Chetnik organization for a period long enough for the rebuilding and renaissance of the country; a population consisting only of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (meaning a denial of nationhood to both Macedonians and Montenegrins), and excluding all national minorities. To these were added agrarian reform following the principle that "land belongs to those who till it"; guaranteed private initiative but nationalized industry, wholesale trade, and banking; an economy organized on the principle of "state cooperativism"; strong legislation against corruption; a gendarmerie recruited from among the Chetniks and under the supervision of the Chetnik organization; and greatly increased propaganda activity to expound Chetnik ideology.9